


The smoke of a great furnace

by lulahbelle



Category: Deathwatch (2002)
Genre: Dreams, Fantasy, Gangbang, M/M, Masturbation, Mental Illness, Multi, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 04:14:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulahbelle/pseuds/lulahbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bradford attends to the radio and tries to weather a mental breakdown</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [poziomeczka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poziomeczka/gifts).



> Fic for the awesome, underrated Jamie Bell film, [Deathwatch (2002) ](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286306/) written as comment fic in September 2011.   
> My ever constant thanks to [](http://poziomeczka.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://poziomeczka.livejournal.com/) **poziomeczka** who is the whole reason for this existing, and who was so patient with me during the writing of it. 
> 
> My favourite character in the film was always Bradford, the one, the actor who played him described as, "the quiet, religious one who goes nuts". 
> 
> Out of such delicate, subtle characterisation I've written nearly 6 thousand words, of disturbing, nearly blasphemous/religious cliche abusing, fic about him slowly wanking himself insane. I feel as if the film got what it deserved. 
> 
> Written for people who haven't seen the film because it introduces the situation of the film and the significant characters briefly. 
> 
> Oh and btw i know nothing about how crystal radios really work. You can probably tell. 
> 
> Also also Charlie is 16 in this which isn't underage where I am but may be where you are...

Blinded by fog Y Company stumbled upon a German trench. Poorly guarded by the few mud caked men within it, it and its occupants were captured with ease. In possession of a forward enemy position, a military achievement because of the significant advantage it gave to the British campaign, Company Captain Jennings intended to do his duty and hold it, but he knew that in order to do that they would need reinforcements. 

 

Supplies of food were sparse, and the battle of the previous evening had left most of the men with injuries that needed treatment. Chevasse in particular had serious need to be transported out to medics attention, because his lack of sensation and movement below the waist made the Doctor Fairweather afraid he'd cut his spine in some way. 

 

They could not seek help on foot. They were in enemy territory now, and all things considered were probably lucky to have reached the dugout with their lives intact, raising heads above the line of the trench again would be suicidal. The trench had a modern up to date crystal receiver, so accidentally appointing himself radio operator by way of his confession of experience with the new fangled beast, their resident religious man Bradford attempted to use it to get through to HQ.

  


On his quick appraisal it was broken, no longer responding to any of the buttons or dials along its plated front, but not entirely expired, for it would sometimes search the lines of static and open channels of communication of its own accord. Bradford monitered these in case they could be used to get out an SOS.

  


After not long of waiting static to cut to voices from the outside, but Bradford's elation turned to shocked despair when they said something like Y Company had all been killed in the battle. Jennings, there with Bradford at the time had frantically told them otherwise but it seemed that the radio had cut out before they got through, because no-one had acknowledged their call, or come to their rescue.

  


From this point on Bradford kept devoted vigil by the radio desperate for the voices to break though again, hoping that the transmission would work long enough for him to get his voice out to help.

___

A channel of static through the headphones again became voices, panicked, shouting voices. Voices meant other souls out there, meant the wider world still looking for them, meant saving. Bradford squawked out desperate cries for help at once into the mouthpiece, but again the radio didn't seem to transmit them, because there was no acknowledgement. 

The voices crackled away again.

Bradford felt the familiar coldness of disappointment shiver past his rain sodden skin. The sensation quickly invaded his heart. Disappointment, becoming self-disappointment easily, naturally. It was probably a failiure of his voice that they hadn't heard him. He had been shocked, unprepared to make a noise, and so he suspected he just hadn't been loud enough. 

As he sat there afterwards he was impossibly tense, preparing himself to do better next time.

Pain in his head, leg and heart intense.

___

Hunched over the radio for hours now, having born the crick in it beyond sufferance, Bradford stretched his neck upwards. The sky above him was sharp white and empty, nothing there whatsoever, not even rain clouds to explain the deluge that seemed to start up every hour or so in this hellish place. He swivelled his head left to right whilst flexing, and saw brown mud walls, glistening with the previous rain. 

Still aching, he hunkered down tighter into the radio. He stared at it resentfully, increasingly aware that he really was bound to it, unable to leave it's side in case it phantomly flared into life when he was away.

Unpredictable beast. 

They needed help more desperately with each passing day.  Everyone's injuries, including the one Bradford had taken to the leg, got more severe with the hours and Doc's supplies of morphine and bandages were depleting at a threatening rate.

___

Bradford kept up his focus, kept himself obsessively true to the radio. He'd developed faith in it when he'd been trained to use the radio in those clean mess halls, months ago, a faith that didn't recede as it should have in the face of it's uselessness but burned on. So all nights he was stuck rigidly awake and next to it, even though the action was futile. He realised all the same that he'd been tricked, stuck in having faith in something not true - not of God, as those of his foolish, sinful kind often easily were.

___

When Doc came by as he often did to check on Chevasse, who lay beside his station with the radio, Bradford stopped going to greet him. Doc accepted this at first, but then asked to see his leg, Bradford refused, keeping the injured limb the other side of wherever Doc was at all times. Bradford didn't want Doc to see his wound, because he had grown too obsessed with watching the radio to re dress it, and as a consequence it had gotten very bad, oozing black blood continuously, new bursts, as spontaneous and often as the rain above, came all the time, wettening his bandages through and through, until they were now nothing but fabric clots of blood stuck to his thigh.

Pulsing, ever worsening pain, rose intensely in deep, hot radiations from the middle of the wound.

___

The longer Bradford spent isolated from the others, the more he mused on himself and his lacks, and the more aware he became that he was basically flawed in nature. Just as the broken bodies of the destroyed would never be fully removed from the mud of the trench, no matter how much Bradford tried to be a good man he thought there was always something bad about him. 

Disgusting.

When last he'd been to church, the priest had assured the congregation that just as one could not hide one's sinful soul from the Lord, he also could not hide it indefinitely from the world. 

To Bradford, his leg, probably rotten by now, felt like the badness at his core finally spilling it's filth into his visible form. They would cut his leg off soon he mused, and think they had taken care of the rot, but Bradford knew with depressing surety that it would go on being inside him, waiting for another chance to wreck him, until he was as ugly and decayed on the outside as he was within.

Doc, suddenly there again, looked up to him, but stayed away, too respectful of Bradford's privacy to seek him where he did not come. Bradford admired Doc, whose very eyes were so full of compassion and care and dignity. He was abundant in goodness, past anything Bradford had ever posessed. 

This was why Bradford shut himself off from his care, he didn't deserve it, and had the very real fear, albeit mute, lurking behind more rational thoughts, that he might contaminate the other man if he accepted.

___

Bradford no longer had any idea why he remained, he held out no genuine hope of being saved anymore. He was not the sort that deserved it, nor did he honestly suspect many of the other men of Y Company were. All were immoral in their ways, apart from Charlie, who was too young to have too many sins. His innocence prompted immorality in the others though, as there was frequently transparent evil in the thoughts and intentions that seemed to flit across the other's faces and words when the young boy was around.

He was so pliable, Charlie, so quick to give himself away to the others wholly and without pride, eyes so babyishly wide and widely blue. He served the other men, bringing them food, lighting their cigarettes, so willing to give what he could. He was unwary, without self-concern and so without self-protection, it made him an easy victim for the others. 

He encouraged the parts of them that were base and low, that would seek to take advantage.

So it had become that Charlie was a receptacle for their physical feelings. Be they aggressive, lively or affectionate in nature. Everyone seemed to be in on it. Sometimes rewarding his puppyish readinness, with taps on the backside or nudges, or an arm around his waist, other times with violence, a slap around the head, or a punch in the arm, a shove from Starinsky. 

They all did it.

Quinn, for instance, had relieved some of his never too dormant agression by rubbing out the glow of a cigarette on Charlie's hand not long ago. He had burned the boy quite badly as all the others, revelling in their inner indifference and cruelty laughed.

Far from offense Charlie grew from these encounters a renewed vigour in his servility, his feeling of group membership greatly emboldened. Somehow he was equally friendly no matter if he was abused or not, clearly feeling himself in service of something more important than himself.

Bradford had once been almost like him, little caring if he was laughed at, or if he was considered humiliatingly odd or wierd, or disregarded by others for preaching to them as he did, because he knew that it was God's word that was important and not himself, so himself and it's concerns didn't matter. 

Gradually he had learnt, and now he knew, that he had been wrong. God did not intend his messengers to have weak selves, or to care about impressing others over protecting themselves, for he did not build his messengers to be weak in any sense. Weak people were only prey to the temptations of the Devil through other stronger sources, and if this War was proof of anything, it was that the Devil was a very strong presence in the hearts of many men, even great ones.

So it was that Charlie was being touched alot in increasingly inappropriate ways, being led to something sinister. 

MacNess was the worse for this, whispering to Charlie, talking to his eyes and them alone, and stroking his face as if he meant to check that the boy was alright, when really it was an excuse to lay physical claim to him. He seemed to be doing this whenever Bradford looked up at Shakespeare. The others commented upon it lewdly, calling Shakespeare MacNesse's wife when they were feeling charitable and implying other more insulting things when they weren't.

It was abominable. Bradford would sit and guard himself by reading the word of the Lord whenever he had to be in the company of the others, increasingly glad whenever he could slip back to the radio away from them and their sins, even as his true faith in the radio began to diminish.

___

Doc came again, he eyed him warily, seeming for a second to Bradford to be more consumed with fear and disgust than with his usual all encompassing pity and compassion. Bradford found he could finally see him. He hated him. Doc didn't want to help him, he never had, all those times Bradford had presumed the other man kind were all exposed as falsenesses. 

False. 

Doc was not how he wanted to appear, wearing a mask of decency to cover up the fact that now, when his own safety was at stake, he just wanted to get away with the minimum of help to others required to make him look good.

"How's the radio?"

Bradford was then aware that he had sat by it gently for hours and nothing. He felt an overpowering anger toward it that he really bit back to respond impassively.

"There was a little activity earlier but the transmission gave out. Nothing for a few hours."

Doc left, mollified, of course he was, he didn't really care. When he did, Bradford began to break apart into anger. He stood, his leg bursting with furious, violent pain as it always did when he put weight on it. He imagined he could feel the wound weeping hard jets of sour pus into his veins as for no reason he screamed down the mouthpiece of the radio.

"THIS IS Y COMPANY...WE ARE ALIVE..."

It seemed to respond to the rough treatment as he thought it might.

Static. Then a voice shouting.

  
_"Y COMPANY HAVE BEEN LOST. I REPEAT Y COMPANY ARE DEAD!"_

Bradford was furious in proclaiming.

"WE ARE ALIVE!!!"

But the voice didn't return.

Bradford shouted again. 

"Y COMPANY ARE ALIVE!!!"

No response. Nothing. Bradford felt all things hard. A crash of disappointment that shoved him. the pain in his leg was shrieking, burning unbearable now. He was dizzy, his head sore with exertion and exhaustion. 

His stance would have wobbled even if he wasn't an invalid.

He could not take this.

He closed his eyes and everything was wiped away. No hope, no possibility of escape. He wished for death, prayed for it silently, begged. 

No answer. Nothing, there was nothing for him. Maybe he was dead after all.

"Bradford, are you ok? Was there someone on the radio."

Charlie. Expression dubious, hidden behind his childish, open faced curiosity.

Bradford had nothing to say.

"I thought I'd come and check on you. Doc says you're hiding your wound from him." There is a pause for Bradford to make some sort of response, but what could Bradford say? That he was disgusted that Doc had sent Charlie to do his bidding?

"Have you been to sleep at all?"

Bradford stared at him uncomprehending as his contemplation of how ashamed Doc should feel, slipped instead as it always did recently to how ashamed he was of himself before Charlie's fresh faced purity. 

Comparison between them made Bradford feel so obviously lacking.

 Charlie with his natural giving nature was genuinely, effortlessly what Bradford had spent all his life attempting to be, honest, pure of motives, empty of self interest. 

Bradford had always known that he was not decent like that at all. He had done everything he accused Doc of doing, appropriated a prancing false goodness to make himself feel better.

His whole body was sore with disappointment and rot and there was Charlie before him, so beatific in the glowing light of nothingness. Charlie extended a hand to his shoulder to encourage an answer and it felt momentous. Bradford hadn't been touched in so long, simply no one else had liked him enough to try.

But Charlie did.

This was judgement, of the young to the old, the pure to the impure. Bradford hoped for redemption in his disgusting coward's way. It came as Shakespeare's goodness seemed to seep through to Bradford's flesh. He didn't seem to withdraw it. 

Bradford wanted to be pure with Charlie. Good. To discard his rotten, worthless flesh, become soul, pure for this hell.

His head swam dizzily on the edges of consciousness as he stared into Charlie's eyes, willing him to proceed. His perfect, obscenely tender, face clenched in concern, genuine concern. Bradford could feel the difference now between it and the fakeness Doc conveyed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bradford wanks himself insane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I firmly contend that the reason why this fic is deeply immoral and insane is because Bradford is....  
> Possibly non con but fantasy bumming and blasphemy

Without verbal disagreement, because he could not muster the energy or mental clarity for words, Bradford was guided by Charlie onto a stretcher next to the sick, sweet smell that was now Chevasse. Charlie smoothed the covers over him in impersonation of a motherly gesture.

Charlie was a child, nothing but a boy and yet here Bradford was disarmed entirely.  
_

He dreamt of the voices coming to Charlie, of him disentangling them, and realising what they meant, that they were clues, him following them until in a neglected part of the trench he discovered a better radio that he used to send an SOS. 

Bradford dreamt he would wake to celebration.  
_

He actually woke to massive, agressive, stabbing pain in his head and in his leg, worse than before, and yet he found that if he breathed through this, that his head was amazingly clear compared to how it had been earlier. His thoughts had been a warm fug of absolutely no coherence, nothing more than a catalogue of wants bobbing up to push through and out, but now it was all gone, clear.

He stared over to Chevasse beside him, the sickly pallor of his flesh with it's sheen of sweat untouched, the flies, the dirt all over him. It wasn't good enough to let him suffer like that and any man with goodness wouldn't have left him like that, but Doc had. Hatred for Doc swarmed in. Strong and hard and reasoned.

He thought of Shakespeare manning the radio and his thoughts became fluttery again, no longer focused at all, seeping back into a warm, close, gush behind his closing eyes.

Replacing hatred with love, with God's love, Bradford thought of Charlie kissing his forehead as his mother used to when he was a child, of the warmth of his goodness flowing all through him. Repairing him. It felt like the best thing he could imagine, and everything, all the rage, all the radio, all the need for salvation, all the guilt and self disappointment, the exhaustion, the mud, the hideous, horrible pain, was unimportant. 

It all elapsed away.

He passed out again.

_

When Bradford woke up the second time he realised that in his sleep he had developed another throbbing hard pain, distinct and seperate from that in his leg, one that managed to quieten the considerable agony of that into submission with its own insistence. 

This time it was between his legs, he was hard. On this scant plateau, so minimally away from sleep, images came unbidden.

Charlie.

The invading hands of the others were not this time wrapped around his middle when it was clothed in a khaki, starched uniform as they had been when Bradford had seen them, now they were underneath the edges of it. Ripping it up, off, exposing the young boy's body, white, soft and entirely smooth, like that of a nude bather Bradford had once seen on one of his mother's health holidays to Devon and never quite forgotten for the God given beauty of his form. 

The hands were aggressive, Quinn's, Starinsky's? And the jeers and appreciation of the other men to the sight of Shakespeare being stripped, were lusty and thick. Charlie accepted, neck stretched back, eyes tight into a sigh of sacrificial, overwhelmed, ecstasy, giving his young self up for the betterment of the men, making Bradford realise that he never could.

The light caught glowing along the top of Charlie's tawny hair and in a stripe down the edge of his shoulders and bare back as on his hands and knees he sank his head even further down. Knees sinking into the dirt that sucked at them like quicksand, face sinking lower, kissing the naked feet of the men who stood before him, one after the other, on, and on, down the line.

He was taking on the humiliation, their sins, but not burdened by them, absorbing, ridding all threat of damnation with his overwhelming goodness. So young, pure and radiant. Mouth so warm, so open and full, as gradually he kissed them all over. 

Feet and shins, hands and arms.

The pleasure of this thought, sent a jolt of arousal down Bradford's spine that bucked out through his hips, setting off a fire of pain in his leg that forced a spark of consciousness through him, almost causing his eyes to become unglued, where sleep had sealed them against the truth and reality of what was happening in his thoughts. Now, not quite conscious, but certainly too alert for the mindlessness of obscenity, his thoughts flowed off its prior heated topic. Bradford felt glad, and pretending to have no notion of the thoughts that awaited him, slowly allowed himself to pass back beneath the veil again.

Shakespeare kissed Macness' hand, pure and chaste, with an expression of great serenity on his face. Macness had large hands, revolting and calloused and settled the other on Charlie's small head, in his hair, he pulled him up so that he could kiss him in turn. His kisses were not good in the slightest, rasps of hot breath against the boy's thin lips, invasive, owning, as all his visible touches to Charlie had been.

As Charlie, shorter, pushed up into Macness' kiss, another hand, sat on his back, following the curve of his quite visible ribcage down his side, appraising his body sordidly. The hand then slipped lower, flat, all the way down until it reached his covered backside which it gave a proprietry squeeze. 

This person pushed themself in close against Charlie's back.

Mac Ness lewdly pushed his tongue inside Charlie's chastely held lips with one hand now about his slender, white neck, and the other continuing to scrabble in the short hair at the back of his head - bringing Shakespeare's face into his, as if afraid that he might pull back.

Bradford was so excited he began to squirm, prompting greater, higher flares of pain in his thigh each time. This pain was excruciating, but it did nothing to dampen his ardour and if it didn't he wondered, what could?

What help was there for him?

His thoughts seemed to be worsening in nature, distressing to him, but he had no means to shut these contemplations off. He tried to think of the Lord's words, of the serene face of the Virgin Mary but his face flushed hot with the fire of the Devil regardless, and even these blessed figures could not keep his evilness out. 

Gradually he felt as if anything he could summon to help his mind would only be sullied by it.

_

Bradford was tormented. It wasn't right for him to release at all, but particularly over such horrible thoughts. 

The deep ingrained dampness of his uniform had become humid with the heat of his excitement. He was annoyingly prone. Even when he took the blanket from himself he could do nothing to reduce his temperature, because for as long as his erection remained he was flushed in the face, his heart beating far too fast, breaths trying to gasp out of him. 

Pain of arousal. Stress, acute, robbing him of energy that he didn't have.

He could not physically bear this state much longer. 

Finally, desperate, he put his hand between his legs, curling his fingertips hard around himself, trying to calm it's throbbing. He would rather not have touched himself at all, for, touch, instead of halting the impending shame, automatically kindled the arousal instead.

Once in mess hall, breathing hard and low he had moved his fingertips in short, light, painful pinches and even this brutal touch had caused him to release almost instantly.  
He didn't want to touch himself but he had no choice.

Shakespeare lay on his back on the contaminated earth, pushed down there by multiple, firm hands. Chalk white and naked, in a hazy sense, for Bradford could not bear, and indeed did not find he needed to imagine his body in any great detail. His legs were apart, and in some horrible desecration of the act of conjunction between man and woman, one of the other men was between them. Uniform trousers barely pushed down by the taker, rubbing scratchy against his spread, unblemished thighs, against his buttocks. 

Hawkstone. Dark, handsome in his way, eyes full of concentration, atop young Charlie, having him. Charlie's eyes were closed, complete surrender, and rode the thrusts made inside him, one arm and frail wrist on the man fucking him, whilst the other arm was spread across his chest, demurely covering its salient features from view.

Hawkstone grunted in his common manly way and pulled large exhalations of pure clear air out of Charlie's lips. Hot, moist air but pure all the same. Taking all of Hawkstone's desperate need and producing something so peaceful and apparently pleasing as to appear beautiful.

Bradford was aching, so terribly, worse than at anytime in his entire life. Everything itched and he was still too warm and he couldn't sleep, and he couldn't wake because he needed to sleep, and besides he couldn't imagine how he would bear the world with consciousness anymore.

The hand he kept around his length to prevent him coming off was suddenly stroking it up and down instead.

The thrusts speeded and it became clear that the other men surrounded the scene laughing. Shouting encouragements to Hawkstone, waiting their turn.

MacNess got down beside Charlie, stroking his face, waiting until Hawkstone's thrusts ceased their frantic downward jabbing turn. They soon did and Hawkstone came off inside him with a deep, panted groan of satisfaction. The moment he was done MacNess climbed ontop of him, belt at once open, not pausing before bearing down and deeply thrusting in him, his head down low to his face where he kissed the tip of his nose. 

 

Charlie's hands spread out at his sides and he did not fight, just was given and gave accordingly.

_

At his deepest low, some semblance of self control finally came to Bradford. To fight, he belatedly decided, was futile. What he needed, was to rid himself entirely of this lust as quickly as possible, then he could start pure again. His mind splintered, the half that made this decision, detached of his bodily mechanics, his emotion, his dread, he felt was his true self, his noble soul. The other devilish, bodily, weak part of himself, was his sin, and it seemed wholly seperate from the core, centre of him.

In the prime portion of his attention they changed over discretely. He wanted to keep it this way for what was not him, but seperated out, seemed as though it could be easily discarded.

His mind's eye was still in thrall to his loins, helplessly corrupted. 

MacNess, had Charlie harder now, with his weight, fucking between his hips in long, fast, throwing thrusts. Exhibitionistic, it was as though he performed the act more for the others, whose eyes, baited breath, and gripping hands shuffling beneath uniforms followed every movement, than for the boy underneath him. 

He was directly uncaring for Charlie who had slipped from dreamy insensibility to the acts that used his body, and was now making small guttural grunts, minute pushes back with his hips at each new intrusion. 

Gaining satisfaction from the way he was used in an essential sense.

Pumping hard now, shivering himself insensible, Bradford's back arched constantly and his thigh cried absolute agony. At the very last surge of his end, it was he, not MacNess, ontop of the boy. Charlie was very naked, sharp shoulders and hip bones, chest unobscured now, nipples hard. Scarlet flush in his cheeks, to match that which still burned Bradford down to his bones, twinning the scorch of his livid cock frictioning his hand.

Bradford's own lips touching to that blessed, hot, soft, skin of Charlie's. The tight skin of his shaft rubbed by his hands and simultaneously into him and against. He spent hard, pushing up inside the Charlie of his visions, forcing open his eyes. 

Keen and bright either side of his not entirely straight line of nose, there were above his small mouthing of.

"Bradford."

Charlie's voice was sad.

Bradford's breaths were sobbing soundlessly out, he made sure of that, aware of the real Charlie not far from where he lay, but in his head every whispered exhale he gave replied, "Charlie".

Ejaculation spreading all over him.

Then afterwards, the gushing, lightening, soothing swell of it roiling around in his belly, through the pulsing settle of his penis. He was irretrievably given over. Dignity at last vanquished, his own pale thighs spread, penis, through the open v of his service issue trousers, plumply in a hand at the end of an aching, burning wrist.

The first thought he had as he slipped back to real grounded awareness was a deep revulsion.

A disgusting, filthy mess of whiteness covered his hands, his fingertips in particular, for they had been in close vicinity, pulling out the viscous clots of semen so painfully, as had become technique everytime he did this from the unexpected, unwanted explosion in mess hall. 

Not having the foresight to pull down his trousers he had splashed over them a too, mainly on the inner zip but nonetheless it was a literal stain there that always would be, remindind him of his lowest point.

Pain pooling muddy in his consciousness, fresh blood hot pouring out of his leg.

He would just have to do better.

A part of him, like a parent demanded that he just sleep now.

_

It was less sleep this time. Maybe only five minutes. 

The smell and the pain was all he could feel. He was calm, cool and dead. His head made a sense it could feel calm with. The Earth. It had been the dirt of the surroundings. The trench and the constant sin and barbarity of its contents and inhabitants, trying to force its filth and evil nastiness into him. 

It was the death. 

It was everything else but him. Nearly what he had become, but he had withdrawn from it just in time to be saved.

Chevasse mumbled in his morphine sleep.  
_

It was raining. The droplets were cool on his forehead. Shakespeare was by the radio, headphones on, slumped forward a little, bored, he didn't know a thing of the battle in Bradford's head. Bradford came behind him, refusing to register any dismay, he aimed for levity.

"BOO!"

Shakespeare's eyes, wet and full of fear, locked hard on Bradford, who shuffled out, wincing, keeping his face set like stone.

"Bradford! You've been asleep for ages. Do you feel better?"

Such loveliness in his lines, fragile youth did have all the appearance of almost feminine loveliness at times. Bradford wanted to thank him. Felt it was expected of him to do so, even if he hadn't enjoyed his rest wholly, but a flicker of disgust rose alongside his contemplation of this gesture. After all, contact with Charlie, even as minimal as he'd kept it in the past, had led to unmistakeable depravity in his mind. Depravity that had almost corrupted it for good.

Charlie, Bradford thought as he looked at him was perfect demonstration of evil's technique for temptation. Cloak your twisted outcomes in a cherub's form and you would go far. Charlie was not to be trusted. 

Knowing he must be strong, Bradford's resolve grew stunningly icy.

"I felt fine before Charlie. He who places his faith in God is forever strong."

Charlie's face is emptiness itself, he can't say a thing.

"Were there any voices through the radio when I was gone... From command?"

Bradford bet there wasn't, he bet that there would be when he came back to it. His saviour would save him, this was why the radio hadn't been working in the first place. It was a test to see if he would loose faith with the stress and threat and abandon all principle as Doc had done. 

All of this had been a test.

"No. Just static all the time. I was turning that, that dial there, still couldn't get anything."

"They don't work."

"No. I was just, testing it, trying ya know. I mean I guessed you'd tried as well, but."

He looked hesitant, not quite afraid but his face was falling into that expression from Doc's face, a stupid, fake pleasantness, a false concern.

"Bradford."

"Charlie?"

"Earlier, before, were there voices? Through this?"

Bradford stared at him, stared through him. Light eyes, crooked nose, blunt, striping cheekbones, small panting O of a mouth, Charlie was very nearly ugly the more he stared at him. His true intent shining through if you paused to take in all the slight foulness to his form.

Charlie looked up at him expectantly and to get his attention asked.

"Bradford? What did they say?"

"Nothing. There was noone there."

"When I came it sounded like you were talking to someone."

Bradford felt himself smirk. 

Clever boy. 

He wanted to take the credit for saving them, just as had happened in the dream he'd had, well Bradford knew God wouldn't allow that to happen.

"There was nothing."

Bradford glared at Charlie, willing the other to crumble and withdraw like Doc, he did not.

"You can go back to Doc now. Tell him I can check on Chevasse and he doesn't need to come down here anymore."

Of course this wouldn't work, Doc would come anyway, the other men expected it of him. Charlie didn't seem to be moving away.

It was like electricity when his hand, self consciously observed by his soul, contacted Charlie's arm. When they touched there was a jolt of sensation that made his lamed leg twinge. It made Bradford afraid, he grabbed hard at Charlie, hauling him out of the seat away from the table and the radio. 

The boy was paralysed by shock throughout and even after, stood over Bradford stunned still.

The radio seemed to be murmuring static and Bradford cocked a head to it automatically, still staring at Charlie, willing him to leave. Static, and Charlie's frightened eyes, and nothing was piercing through.


End file.
